Wiccan group finds home in Davidson County

With about 15 members of all ages and different backgrounds, the Rev. Chuck Chapman’s Wiccan Correllian shrine makes up one of the smallest religious subgroups in the area.

BY NASH DUNNThe Dispatch

The Rev. Chuck Chapman is a witch. He’s also a father.He believes in magic. He also believes in the divine.He doesn’t ride a broom, nor wiggle his nose to cast spells. Chapman, of Lexington, is a second-degree priest and founder of the Lady of the Circle of the Oaks, a formal Wiccan shrine of the Correllian Nativist Tradition. The shrine, created in Lexington last winter, is the only open pagan religious outlet in Davidson County.With about 15 members of all ages and different backgrounds, Chapman’s Correllian shrine makes up one of the smallest religious subgroups in the area.“I like to tell everyone I’ve been Wiccan for a couple of days,” Chapman said. “I’ve been pagan since 1986. I’ve been around a little while.”There are about 342,000 Wiccans across the United States, according to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey from 2008. Additionally, there are more than 30 Wiccan groups or associations across the state and more than 65 pagan organizations in North Carolina, according to an online database of pagan groups and associations.Chapman, who is originally from Oklahoma and grew up in South Carolina, said he saw a need for a formal Wiccan group in the community.“The Correllian tradition is very open, very inclusive of the many different Pagan paths and thoughts,” Chapman said. “Wicca in general is very non-dogmatic, and Correllianism is even less dogmatic and very open to beliefs that are a little bit outside what may be specifically Correllian thought.”Witchcraft, or Wicca, is a religion. Wicca, Chapman said, is about one’s place in the universe, about revering nature and all its forces, and is about learning how to understand and interact with the deity and the world around you.Generally speaking, most Wiccans gather once a month at the full moon and eight times a year for solar holidays, or their Sabbaths. Chapman said the shrine hosts an open ritual for each Sabbath. Some Wiccans also gather at the dark moon, or the new moon, Chapman said.Dealing with misconceptionsPart of the Wiccan path also includes embracing magic, which can bring all sorts of not necessarily peaceful attention to one of the smallest groups in the area.“Obviously, we get the, ‘You’re a devil worshipper’ thing all the time,” Chapman said. “That’s a battle we’ve been fighting for a long time.”Chapman said he advises his group to ignore those comments, which he said are null and void because Wiccan don’t even believe in hell. However, if it ever becomes a discriminatory issue, he will try to educate someone or plant “thought seeds” in their head.“Unfortunately, what I’ve found is that people coming into paganism, young in the craft, get very offended very quickly by statements like, ‘You’re a devil worshipper’ or ‘You are going to hell,’ and that’s an education issue within our own community,” Chapman said. “One thing I try to teach people about is don’t define yourself by what you are not, define yourself by what you are.”Matt Gildner, a member of the shrine, said his involvement in the pagan path has made him more secure in his beliefs, despite some criticisms from others. Gildner said he has been full-time pagan since 1996.Gildner, who grew up in the Christian faith, said he wasn’t entirely comfortable because he felt he was being molded for the pastorhood of the Methodist denomination.“At that time, I was of a thought process to be the good son because I wanted my parents’ blessings and approval,” Gildner said. “I had a rather rough time at the beginning of my life, and I didn’t have the approval I wanted as a young child. As I grew older and I was in the church, as my mom married her third husband, I wanted that approval because I didn’t get if before. “I did what they required of me — go to church, read the Bible, say your prayers, do the right thing. I still do the right thing now, and I have to say that some of my faith is based off of my Christian upbringing. But that was just a building block of where my faith is now.”Today, protestant churches are most prominent in Davidson County. The county’s Christian ties span back to its German settlers, who established the Pilgrim Reformed Church in the 1750s, one of the oldest organized churches in the area, said Davidson County Historical Museum Curator Catherine Hoffmann, reading from “Pathfinders Past and Present: A History of Davidson County, North Carolina” by M. Jewell Sink and Mary Green Matthews.The county’s large Baptist population may date back to John Gano, a Baptist missionary preacher from the Jersey Settlement, who was responsible for founding several Baptist churches in Reeds, Tom’s Creek, Lick Creek area, which organized in 1832 as the Liberty Baptist Association, Hoffmann said.While smaller in size, the Episcopal Church also has roots in Davidson County, as does the Roman Catholic Diocese of North Carolina, Hoffmann said. Magic: prayer with toolsSome stereotyping may be rooted in the Wiccan image in pop culture and Hollywood. Movies like “Practical Magic,” “The Craft” and “Hocus Pocus” portray magic and some pagan thought in a light that is mostly fueled by entertainment value, rather than fact, Chapman said. “If magic worked the way everybody thinks it does, things would be so much easier, but that’s not the way it works,” Chapman joked.To Chapman, magic doesn’t require anyone’s belief to exist. It is the art and science of changing consciousness at will to affect one’s environment, he said.“It’s not fireballs and lightning bolts — it’s not even stage illusion,” Chapman said. “It has to do more with the way we see the world than the way the world sees us. It has to do with state of consciousness.”Chapman said magic has been defined as prayer with tools. It can be done with spells, but it doesn’t have to be. Tools like an Athame, or a ceremonial dagger; a chalice, or a Goblet-style cup; and a wand and a pentacle can also be used to impact one’s environment.“We use those in ritual to help work through issues, to help bring about change within ourselves,” Chapman said. “And because we are experiential and not revelatory, a lot of times in ritual when we’re working with the tools or without things will come through, we’ll experience something and that is usually spiritual growth.”Chapman compared the tools they use in ritual to communion in the protestant church.“We all know that’s not the flesh and blood of Jesus, but in a ritual sense it is,” Chapman said. “The same thing in ritual for us. We know, for example, that the Athame doesn’t represent the intellect, but we understand that is the representation of the mind.”One of the key beliefs in the Wiccan culture is the Law of Attraction, which revolves around the fact that what you put out, you draw back to you.“It’s not 100 percent obviously,” Chapman said. “If it was 100 percent, I’d be driving a BMW and not a Jeep, if that’s what I wanted. But we can change the way we look at things and affect what goes on around us. If it’s not affecting what’s going on around us, we can affect the way we view the things around us. Most of us try to use magic to see or view things in a more positive light. We try not to look at things negatively.”Wiccans also don’t possess a divine writ.“We understand that even messages coming through from the divine are filtered through human consciousness,” Chapman said. “Revelatory religions say, ‘This said this.’ In the craft, we don’t believe in hell. We don’t have any holy writ to tell us, ‘Thou shall not kill.’ We look to ourselves and inner divinity to know killing is wrong.”Chapman, who is working toward becoming a third-degree priest, said it is his hope to lead people to the point where they are making decisions to do the right thing, based on the fact that it’s simply the right thing.Once Chapman obtains his third-degree title, the shrine, which operates under the imperium of the Rev. Bruce Richards HP, of The Church of the Circle in the Oaks in Lady’s Island, S.C. will become a full temple. For more information on the shrine, go to ladyofthecircle.webs.com.

Nash Dunn can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 227, or at nash.dunn@the-dispatch.com.